This is all I can do and this I have done

                                                     This is all I can do and this I have done

With Prakash Karat scything any possible liaison with Congress, the chances of a united opposition are receding. ( since writing this piece, I learn that Karat has been overruled for his objection to uniting with Congress) A few regional satraps are attempting a Federal Front (more of a notional unitedness than a reality ) and making tentative and nearly inaudible noises as their only interest is to selfishly safeguard their regional and parochial territory from the triumphal march of the  Moditva forces. These satraps are state-centric and not Delhi-centric as they know they do not have either the pan national presence or the extraordinary charisma to be accepted as pan-India leaders.  It is more like parts trying to coalesce into a whole rather than a whole functioning through its parts. The opposition unity is like a chimera, an imaginary monster made up of disparate parts, a fanciful mental illusion. Their combined force can only be centrifugal whereas what is needed at the national level is a centripetal force to hold the nation together. United opposition today looks like an emaciated paper tiger that does not even possess the static sturdiness of Behenji’s stone elephants in Uttarpradesh. Federal Front against Mahaghatbandhan (grand alliance)sounds sweet to the BJP ears. Any fragile unity can be easily torpedoed by sheer money power that BJP has in its election war chest.  This has been  clearly demonstrated in Bihar where the Chief Minister who won because of the Ghatbandhan (alliance)between his party, Congress and Lalu Prasad’s RJD, switched to the rival BJP without a guilty sense of betrayal of those who earlier had helped him to defeat the BJP and come to power in Bihar.  Money trumps marginal electoral wins and makes a winner out of the loser. Goa and Meghalaya have shown how the verdict can be turned on its head through money power.

So the shrill cry Modi Mukht Bharat is a poor parroting of the BJP’s blaring call of Congress Mukht Bharat. 2019 is just a few months from now and the BJP is confident that all the leaders of the Humpty Dumpty opposition that had its ignominious fall five years back cannot put it together again. This, despite the harsh and  indelible truth that in the last four years India has become a huge cauldron of conflicting hate politics spread along caste, class, religion and ideology.

There has been (and which continues) an intense fight to capture the intellectual space. Fiercely arrogant, the  spokespersons of the ruling party outshout the opposition on the TV channels and through the social media to claim that all that was left is no longer right; all that is right is no longer left. Many universities like JNU, Central University of Hyderabad, Benares Hindu University and Delhi University have seen political clashes, unprecedented violence and police presence. The media seems to be a pathetic spectator, most of them have willingly accepted to be gagged and those who have the temerity to speak out what they feel the truth have come under harassment, labeled anti national and their premises raided by Income tax sleuths. The FTII was in the eye of the storm for a good many months while films like Padmavaat was subjected to vandalism through artificially induced hysteria over alleged slight to Rajput( read Hindu) pride. Cow vigilantism, love Jihad and moral policing have resulted in lives being snuffed out by mob violence. Temple visits and temple building are given top priority among the “must be done” activities in a nation striving hard to develop its scientific temper and technological advancement. Those who spoke out have been silenced forever like Gouri Lankesh, Pansare and Kalburgi -who  have been gunned down between 2015-17. The Republic of India is plunging hell bent to become the Rapeublic of India. These are facts, not imagined ones.

Something has gone rotten with the state of India. What has caused the rot? The paradoxical truth is the huge unassailable majority with which BJP had been returned to power. What should have galvanized the party to establish a glorious rule, got dissipated because of the hubris it bred that they can do whatever they wanted to ,as the marginalized opposition was reduced to be a pathetic and spineless spectator. The manner with which the social media cell of the party trolled the opposition gave the party members-big and small, ministers and MPs, fringe workers and lumpen elements unbridled sanction to indulge in actions that went contrary to the secular and pluralist ethos of the nation enshrined in our Constitution. The strength of democracy rests with an effective opposition, an impartial judiciary and a watchful media.

Hence the need to have an effective opposition is urgent and imminent. If democracy is to survive, the ruling government must work with the opposition to steer the nation out of the present state of chaos and lawlessness. George Santayana’s saying “Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds" best describes our current state of mental apathy and torpor .  The gingerly attempts to forge a united opposition suffer from factionalism and ideological differences. Every leader wants to be a sultan in his/her own state. We are returning to pre-independence state when there was no one India or Bharat till  leaders like Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel and writers  like Tagore, Subramanya Bharati, Aurobind Ghosh, Sarojini Naidu  and thinkers like Gokhale, Tilak and Ambedkar, to name a few,  forged a  single entity Bharat  from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, from Kolkatta to Mumbai crisscrossing North, South, East and West. Before that there were only princely states at war with each other. We are once again back to that ancient order- what is known in Tamil as ‘vanga desam’ of 56 kings fighting against each other. Protest marches led by Dalits, Safai karamcharis, farmers,teachers, students, traders and other different regional  groups reflect a divided and discontented society. Hate speech has been shown to have increased 500 times more than at any other time prior to 2014.

How do we bring back sanity, decorum and civilized and cultured behaviour in action and speech? It can only be done by getting rid of the TINA factor that gives BJP a head start. The macro monumental  optics  that has been assiduously built up around Narendra Modi as a divine avatar( going to absurd lengths of his rise as predicted by Nostrodamus) has to be seen with greater penetration, objectivity  and rigour. Everyone has his/her plus as well as minus points. For the ruling party to focus only on the plus and spin it out of all proportions is nothing but indulging in hagiography – or to use a Sanskrit word ,’nara sthuthi (worship of Man). Hagiography suppresses the truth and after sometime it produces an opposite effect of ennui and apathy.  Similarly for the opposition to focus only on the negative side is to remain like the one eyed Cyclops , blind, suspicious and vengeful. No government is wholly bad and wholly good. There are hits and misses and the opposition has to see both objectively.

The only pan India party to steer the nation back to democracy is the Congress. That is why PM Modi had  targeted only Congress and has been working overtime to rid Bharat of Congress. Not for a moment I see any greatness in Congress to solve all the problems. But it has to be a strong and reasonable opposition even if it is not voted to power. Here are a few suggestions- nothing new or sensational, but something to ponder over to get a decent number to be in the opposition.

1.Congress must have the humility and the courage to accept its mistakes for which it was thrown out of power and start on a new and clean slate. It has to provide an alternate narrative that has  both a rational and emotional appeal to the masses. Instead of digging into what Modi had promised but failed to deliver, instead of blaming the ruling government for every conceivable ill , let the congress focus only on what it can do to better the present period of unrest, slow economic growth, cash crunch, rape, murder, education, environment and pollution, foreign policy, agricultural and industrial production etc.

2.  Congress has to show that it has learnt the lesson and is ready to start as a rejuvenated party. Let it start with the slogan “We Can” and “We Will”.

3. Don’t criticize the PM or his trusted aides or the ruling party. The brilliance of the Prime Minister is to turn the criticism on its head and play the card of a harassed victim. In London, he told the Indian diaspora (whose heart and soul bleat for the poor in India even while enjoying their personal and physical comfort in a far off distant land) that his strength comes from the daily dose of abuses he takes. He is a master orator and a brilliant spin doctor.

4. Congres must re-christen itself  as  Congress National Party where it should invite leaders and intellectuals of repute and integrity to be a part of the government. This is not the time for ideological  debate, not about  right or left, but about what is best for the nation that ensures economic equity, social justice and better quality of life for all Indians.   

4. Take the positives of the present ruling party. The GST and Aadhar were the brainchild of the Congress, though opposed by the BJP in the past. Today they are the central focus of the present government. It is to the credit of BJP that it did not throw the baby out of the water bath. Just articulate the changes Congress wants to introduce and why the two are needed for the limited purposes and  benefit the people and how these changes will  obviate the possible hardship and loss of privacy inherent in the present scheme of things.

5. The Mohalla clinics of AAP and the utopian Modicare schemes have many positives to follow. Congress should not cavil at them but show how they can be improved upon, how they can be linked to the existing CGHS schemes and Insurance schemes  and how to make it work through private hospitals.   Congress should adopt the microcredit   and not the microfinance pattern to provide healthcare. The primary difference between microcredit and microfinance is that Microcredit is defined as the loan facility for poor customers while a broad range of financial services for the poor clients is known as Microfinance. The government does not have the money to finance healthcare to all but can make the poor take monthly insurance for a paltry sum of five rupees per member per family which can provide them the cushion for hospital expenses. People don’t need charity; they need self sufficiency and self dignity through their own efforts.  

             6.Education must be given top priority in the scheme of things. Again don’t fault AAP which in its infancy has attempted to better the quality of government schools. Be magnanimous in acknowledging the good work done by others even if they have defeated you in the elections.  Formulate a new education policy after consulting academics and scholars who are known for their passion for education. Bring back to focus what Rousseau had said in his treatise ‘ Emile or on Education’ :  “In the first place, “Is it good in itself?” In the second, “Can it be easily put into practice?”The proposed scheme that Congress formulates should be intelligible and feasible to adopt. Here is no point in providing one size fits all education that is imported from the West.  To quote Rousseau once more, “one kind of education would be possible in Switzerland and not in France; another would be adapted to the middle classes but not to the nobility. The scheme can be carried out, with more or less success, according to a multitude of circumstances, and its results can only be determined by its special application to one country or another, to this class or that.” Make a tripartite scheme that caters to basic education and skill training, professional education and academic-cum-research oriented studies. This will be a bold move and ensure that no one scheme is privileged over the other.

             7. The present government has done well to seek Israel’s assistance in agricultural methods to improve produce and income. Accept this graciously and implement Swaminathan recommendation as the first step towards alleviation of farmers’ misery.

           8.  It is good that the muscular and military approach to Kashmir is slowly being wound up by the government. Build trust and start dialogue with Kashmiris and find solutions that do not compromise their loyalty and self dignity.

          9. Kindly tone down anti-Pakistan rhetoric. What is the use of going to every forum and call Pakistan a terrorist state? It has only bred more enmity and vengeful reaction.  No need to brag about our military power nor run here and there seeking more and more arms. Let us return to Pt. Nehru’s Panch sheel. Even if he was betrayed by China, remember  one swallow does not make a summer. We can quietly strengthen ourselves and do surgical strikes without telling the world, “hey, look, we have taught them a lesson!” More things are wrought by action than loud words. With sports, cinema, music, art and literature, let us attempt building a new relationship which at the core should be founded on Gandhiji’s concept of Non violence. To be non violent needs more courage than pressing the trigger.

        10. There are many more things to attend to. But let the goal to set is a United India that follows the Rg Veda which exhorts us to accept noble ideas from everywhere. “Aano bhadrah kritawo yantu vishwataha

             I end up with my return to Rousseau: “I have not written about other people’s ideas of what must be done but about my own. My thoughts are not those of others;… It is within my power to refuse to be wedded to my own opinions and to refuse to think myself wiser than others…. This is all I can do, and this I have done. If I sometimes adopt a confident tone, it is not to impress the reader, it is to make my meaning plain to him. Why should I profess to suggest as doubtful that which is not a matter of doubt to myself? I say just what I think.”